We
constantly hear that discrimination and exploitation force women to
make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. It's time to end the wage
gap myth with a dose of common sense economics.
First of all, the wage gap is
based on inappropriate use of data and statistical analysis. In the U.S.
the 77% number is calculated by looking at the median yearly earnings
of women to men. The median is defined as the middle value of all the
wages in a given sample. Using the median is useful if we are comparing
winter temperatures between New York and Tampa, where one dimensional
data has validity, but applying it to humans that have free will and
biological differences proves nothing except that demagoguery works.
Is the median wage lower for
women? Absolutely it is, but the statistic is not an apples to apples,
job for job comparison and thus has nothing to do with "paying women
less than a man for doing the same job." Using the median without taking
into consideration specifics of individuals in the workplace is
intentionally misleading or ignorant.
So what causes the variation in
pay? Personal and workplace choices account for much of the gap. Labor
Department research shows that men choose more dangerous and high stress
jobs. Men choose higher paying career fields. And men hold more full
time jobs, work longer hours, weekends, and nights than women. All these
factors lead to higher wages regardless of gender.
Stanford economist Thomas
Sowell shows that "women are typically not educated as often in such
highly paid fields as mathematics, science, and engineering, nor
attracted to physically taxing and well paid fields as construction
work, lumberjacking, coal mining and the like." All these factors create
differences in pay that have nothing to do with the exploitation of
women.
Maybe the biggest reason is
biology. Women make up 50% of the workforce but give birth to 100% of
the babies. And if women choose to have children, their incentives
change and this affects their choices of jobs, careers, continual
service and hours spent on the job. The New York Times reported
that among Yale alumni in their forties, only 56 percent of the women
still worked, compared with 90% of the men. It goes without saying that
traditionally men do not face the same incentives of biology and child
rearing as women.
When these variables are
included to the unadjusted 23 cent wage gap difference, the gap falls to
5-7 cents; according to a 2010 study by The United States Congress
Joint Economic Committee's Comprehensive Review of Women in the U.S.
Economy. Thomas Sowell concurs, showing that "Women who remain single
earn 91 percent of the income of men who remain single, in the age
bracket from 25 to 64 years old." And what's left of the 5% gap is
bridged by systemic socio-cultural factors, not by intentional causation
based on discrimination.
If
we actually compare apples to apples in the workforce, the facts will
disturb those who are married to the vision of female victimization.
According to Marty Nemko and data compiled from the Census Bureau,
unmarried women who've never had a child actually earn more than
unmarried men. In a 2010 study of single childless urban workers between
the ages of 22 and 30, Reach Advisors found that women earned an
average of 8% more than their male counterparts. And according to the
Labor Department, "of men and women who work 30 to 34 hours a week,
women make more, 109 percent of men's earnings."
Sowell backs up these findings,
"comparing never-married women and men who are past the child-bearing
years and who both work full-time in the twenty-first century shows
women of this description earning more than men of the same
description."
Basic economics tells us that
it makes no sense for an employer to pay a man more than a woman, if
they can get the same productivity out of hiring the woman; unless the
employer likes discrimination more than profits. To believe that women
are paid 75 percent of what men receive for doing the same work is to
believe employers can afford to pay 3 male workers the same as they pay 4
female workers that would produce 25 percent more output, and stay
competitive in a economy that sees most businesses last less than ten
years.
Even prior to all the hand
wringing about pay inequality, free markets proved there was no pay
discrimination. Sowell's research shows that single women in 1971 who
had worked continuously since high school earning slightly more than men
of the same description. This fact was conveniently missed in 1972 when
an executive order was signed creating affirmative action for women who
were being underrepresented in the workplace.
The facts just don't add up in
the wage gap argument. To say that men are paid more than women for the
same job is an attempt to redefine the laws of supply, demand, profit
motive, and human nature. Class, gender, and racial victimhood pay big
dividends for politicians, but only if gullible, ill-informed citizens
buy false rhetoric like the female wage gap.
